(ca. 1300–1325)
Sir Degaré is a MIDDLE ENGLISH verse ROMANCE of about 1,100 lines, written in a southwest Midland dialect in the early 14th century. The poem, composed in couplets, survives in six manuscripts and in three early printings, suggesting it was relatively popular in its own day. Some scholars believe it was based on a lost Breton LAI. Certainly it has many qualities of the Breton lai, including the interaction with the fairy world and its setting in Brittany. Degaré is conceived under bizarre circumstances: His princess mother, visiting her own mother’s grave in the woods, wanders from her ladies-in-waiting and is ravished by a scarlet-robed fairy-knight in the forest. The mysterious knight then announces that the princess will give birth to a male child, and leaves the woman his sword, the tip of which is broken off. The princess must hide her pregnancy and her newborn from her possessive father, whose incestuous desire for his daughter is strongly implied. The fatherless infant is abandoned at the door of a hermitage along with gold and silver, the broken sword, and his mother’s gloves.Growing up as an orphan in the hermitage, the boy has no status in society and no family identity, and the kind hermit names him Degaré, or “the Lost One.”When Degaré is grown, he leaves the hermitage on a quest for his identity, to learn his true parentage. Beginning his adventures, Degaré defeats a dragon with a club and is knighted by the earl that he rescues. He then comes to Brittany, his mother’s kingdom, where she is being offered as a prize to the knight who can defeat her father in single combat. Defeating the king, Sir Degaré wins his mother’s hand. Fortunately Degaré still has the glove with him, and before the marriage is consummated, she tries on the gloves, which fit perfectly, and Degaré realizes he has found his mother. He flees the incestuous union and goes off to search for his other parent. Along the way he wins a beautiful damsel by defeating her unwanted suitor, but he says that he cannot marry her until he has found his father. Finally, he engages in a climactic battle with a potent knight who, recognizing the sword in Degaré’s hand, reveals that he is the young man’s father and proves it by producing the sword’s lost tip. The two are reunited, and ultimately, the tale ends happily as Degaré’s parents marry, and he weds his own lady.
Sir Degaré has had its share of detractors as well as defenders. Certainly the poem’s characters are purely conventional, but the suspense created by the wellconstructed plot goes far in sustaining reader interest. The plot suggests the influence of some later manifestation of the Oedipus myth, possibly the Legend of Pope GREGORY THEGREAT contained in the Gesta Romanorum. The folktale or fairy-tale atmosphere of the romance is part of its popular appeal.
Bibliography
■ Faust, George Patterson. Sir Degaré: A Study of the Texts and Narrative Structure. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1935.
■ Rosenberg, Bruce A. “The Three Tales of Sir Degaré,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 76 (1975): 39–51.
■ Sir Degaré. Edited by Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, in The Middle English Breton Lays. Kalamazoo, Mich.:Medieval Institute Publications, 1995.
■ Slover, Clark H. “Sire Degarre: A Study of a Medieval Hack Writer’s Methods.” University of Texas Studies in English 11 (1931): 6–23.
■ Stokoe,W. C., Jr. “The Double Problem of Sir Degaré,” PMLA 70 (1955): 518–534.
Encyclopedia of medieval literature. 2013.